There Should Be a Greater Penalty for Heavier Armor

Im thinking that Leather Armor should restrict dexterity and anything "agility" related a little more than nothing at all. Chainmail should do this much more than Leather, then Quarter plate more still, Half plate more still, and Full Plate being the most "agility" restricting armor.

Ive been experimenting with different "dex monkey" builds lately, and now am playing a combat-mage. I dont see much incentive to not-wear Leather, at higher level the fizzle chance doesnt really have much of an overall effect. It would make sense if I were faster in cloth, like a martial-monk's robes being less about protection and more about freedom of movement and deception. Leather armor would naturally slow all the movements down somewhat, and restrict freedom of movement much more than cloth robes, though certainly allowing the wearer to be relatively agile.

In SoTA, wearing leather provides considerably more protection than cloth, but at very little cost to a seasoned mage. Its perfectly suited for a spell-heavy battle mage (I dont even use combat styles, just auto attack).

I feel it should shave off a tiny bit of dexterity and agility-based-defensive skills like dodge or evasion, or something of that nature. Cloth should have no negative impact on these attributes and skills. The otherway around is fine with me too - Cloth providing bonuses to defenses, dex, and light-armor defense skills, Leather providing less bonuses, Chainmail providing far less, and up to Heavy plate giving zero. Well, heavy plate should always have some negative impact on agility/swiftness-based game mechanisms.

Either way, my melee-based-caster w/ light armor build should have a bigger incentive to wear cloth - faster, speedier, harder to hit, higher dps, while my mage-heavy-melee'er w/light armor should have less incentive to just wear leather.

Note: I havent worn platemail since like R12 or something, I gravitate towards dex/agility based characters in RPGs.

These things might help with RP as well, or at least the clothing market in the player economy. There should be a reason to take the plate mail off for fishing, or attending an event, or whatever - just an incentive to take off heavier suits of armor when a social situation calls for it, and wear "normal" clothes. Perhaps avatars will someday play poker, and be terrible at it if a platemail helmet is blocking most of the vision and subtle nuances of other player's facial expressions.

 

There actually are penalties associated with some of the heavier armors. Some are saying too much in other threads in this section.

I'm not sure i would restrict dex with leather as leather is the primary armor for archers and dex is their primary stat.

Personally, I can't say much about the comparison of leather and cloth.

 

Need to be careful with putting penalties on wearing armour. It can lead to some nasty consequences, like melee in general being overly disadavantaged.

Having said that, I've heard a lot of stories of mages wearing plate armor. I'm a mage and I haven't tried that, but that sounds crazy if that actually works.

 

its simple, plate is for defense against stray objects you do see coming, plate is heavy, fighting in crowds. mages cant and wouldn't wear plate in RLife sorta speak. In Rlife if I were going after a large beast, I wouldn't wear plate, studded leather most likely, I.e swat team gear.

 

Do you come across a lot of mages in real life?

Sorry couldn't resist

 

quite often, I am dismayed to report.

 

Mages wearing plate happened because of a bug for fizzle. That's been fixed with R29, so mages wearing plate shold be a thing of the past. (Unless of course they want to deal with the fizzle rate on spells.)

 

really? Ive played melee from R10-R28 and my partner plays casters, Id say melee is crazy OP. My leather armor build felt invincible at high level unless it was a big crowd of high level mobs. The damage I did was nuts. Im playing a mage now and its hilarious how much better melee is (though I am having fun spellcasting!).

pretty much how i see it. IRL if I was in a duel, I wouldnt wear anything nearly as heavy as plate, Id wear something light and very easy to move in. If I were going into a huge battle, Id want some chainmail with plate covering my head and organs. Plate isnt practical to just wear around all the time. Light armor just makes you a squishy target in a massive melee.

 

You're making a comparison; I'm generalising.

 

I still think there should be some neat bonus for using cloth, like slightly faster casting of glyphs or something of the sorts to compensate for lower protection. Or perhaps lower focus consumption

 

In real life mages have to wear cloth. Particularly what we call a straight jacket so they don't harm themselves while off their meds

 

How about this? Have you ever noticed leather gloves and cloth gloves both have 0 armor but the leather adds fizzle?

That's a head scratcher...

 

Atm its far more benificial to wear cloth as a mage, because the protection leather offers over cloth is not much better, but cloth can recieve many spell enhancing modifications, while leathers bonuses lean more tward physical bonuses

 

As an Archer, I wear leather and to take Dexterity away from wearing leather is a big mistake. I do not want to wear cloth armor.

 

if anything, light armor should have a dex-giving inate skill since heavy armor has strength buffs

EDIT: i say dex because strengthhas and effect on melee damage as well as a couple of defensive attributes, but does not help magic outside the earth tree. Dex gives defesive attributes as well as crit bonuses to everything including magic (i think), so it just seems logical.

 

Well, firstly I dont mean a big penalty, just something to represent "its harder to draw your bow wearing a default leather jerkin than it is when wearing a linen shirt" etc.

Though, after re reading what I posted, I think now its better to side towards bonuses for types of armor, rather than tiered penalties.

I have extensively tested leather and widely tested cloth - leather absolutely provides significant and ample protection over cloth. You do make a good point about the physical vs focus based bonuses on the types of armor. My mage uses a polearm (with no glyphs) because the supplemented damage is too good to give up. The DPS on spells is terrible compared to melee, even at high level. Combined with an auto attacking weapon tho, and my dps is great. Which leads me to this whole discussion on incentives for armor - right now my mage doesnt have a huge incentive to wear only cloth, and does have some incentive to wear tougher armor. Id like there to be an incentive for my mage to be mage-like.

Right now Im honestly even poking fun at this whole system with my latest tests - my mage is wearing heavy helmet, boots, and gloves, and I have 0 heavy armor skill. The stats say I should fizzle like %20 of the time but I never ever do (or its so rare I dont even notice).

 

Right now heavy armor means you basically can't use any magic at all, which is where all the power is in the game and tons of combos rely on magic. So heavy armor is VERY restrictive currently. I would suggest that a heavy armor + shield build right is is significantly weaker than others in the game.

 

I may be wrong but i think the new damage resistance is supposed to affect all incoming damage including magic.

 

I'm not sure but i think there may be 2 systems. I don't think magic is going to be reduced globally by the things that reduce physical.

 

If magic like air and fire are sufficiently discoraged from heavier armor, i think the magic users and warrior types would be able to sufficiently hurt each other, but melee would desire armor piercing attacks to take on other melee fighters, and since the armor penetrating powers of polearms are supposedly much better than any other weapon class, we might see them becoming more desirable versus melee, while blades may be the hail mary against clothers. Bludgeon still is better suited for support imo